Ramblings of a Programmer

OK… get your minds out of the gutter.  After a couple of years of being in total love with the combination of Firefox Greasemonkey, I started using Google’s Chrome browser.  Right off, I missed the functionality that was gained with the Greasemonkey plugin and various scripts that I had downloaded from userscripts.org.  After a few weeks of using Chrome and realizing that its speed has won me over, I thought I would look around to see about using Greasemonkey with Chrome.  I found what I was looking for tonight in Greasemetal.

Greasemetal is a userscript runtime which hosts javascript files for use with Google Chrome just as Greasemonkey does for Firefox.  I have tried a few of my favorite scripts for Flickr and all seem to work well so far.  Check out the Greasemetal web site to get the installation file.

Yeah… you know how the say goes.  Between work and the baby, I have not had much time to participate in the things that I enjoy like photography, geocaching, etc.  My blog has suffered greatly as well.  I realized tonight that I am on such an old version of WordPress (2.2.3) that I might have to scrap everything and start fresh.  I am not really sure what the upgrade path would be or if there even is one for that big of a gap.

I’ve been using twitter more and more as of late.  As long as you do not have too many people to follow, it is actually manageable.  You can follow me at http://twitter.com/kwsanders.

My wife and I were sitting at Children’s Hospital this morning with our family waiting on news about our baby’s surgery.  He was born with a cleft lip and surgery was planned to repair it today.  We received many recommendations for the surgeon that is performing the surgery.  Some recommendations came as far away as people in Pensacola who traveled to Birmingham with their child just to see Dr. John Grant III.  He is a very respected surgeon in this field.

Update:  I wanted to leave an update on the surgery from earlier today.  It was a success.  Everything went well during the surgery, which lasted about 3 hours.  As the surgeon put it, “everything fell into place” and he did not have to do any major reconstruction to fix his left nostril which was sort of pulled flat due to the cleft lip.  The lip line looks fantastic and since our little trooper did have his Cupid’s Bow, when things were pulled together, the stitches fell right along the line of the left side of the Cupid’s Bow, so the scar may not be noticeable at all.

It has been quite a while since I posted anything to my blog.  Between work and taking care of the baby in the evenings, I haven’t had much time for anything else.My wife and I took the baby to the pediatrician today.  He is growing like a weed.  At 9 weeks, he is now 12 pounds and 24.5 inches long. 

We had a trial run for the delivery last night.  My wife’s contractions got pretty regular with some other pain.  Upon hearing of this, her doctor told her to head into the hospital.  So, right around 11:00 pm last night, we took off on the 50 minute journey to the hospital.  After 5 hours of up and down contractions, her doctor came in early this morning to check her and ended up sending us home. 

It was a bit frustrating for my wife.  She had contractions all evening with some of them “knocking her socks off” so to speak, yet the baby is still not here.  He will come when it is time, of course.

We are both really anxious at this point.

We had a couple of false alarms earlier in the weekend.  My wife has had, as she puts it, “a lot of tightness” in her tummy and pain in her back.  I guess I am a bit anxious and ready for the little rug rat to get here. 

My wife is just over 2 weeks from giving birth to our second son.  Tonight while in the kitchen, she stopped cold in her tracks.  I asked her what the problem was and she said she had a contraction that about brought her to her knees.  She mentioned later this evening that the contractions were constant while she is up and moving around.

Maybe we will be heading to the hospital this weekend.

My son and I went with my wife for her sonogram today.  Everything looks great with the baby.  Her pregnancy is going very well with no complications.  The baby looks very healthy.  After a lot of coaxing by the technician, the baby finally revealed that it will be a boy. 

Our 9 year old really smiled big when he saw the heart pumping on the screen.  He said that he got his wish.  I think he is taking to the idea of being a big brother.  I just hope he doesn’t charge the little guy for protection at school or something later on.   hahaha

Thursday, March 6th, is the big day for us. We go to my wife’s doctor to have a sonogram that tells us the sex of our baby that is due in July. We are taking Matthew, our 9 year old with us in hopes that he will get excited about being a big brother in the next few months.

So many people feel like the government owes them something.  We pay so much in taxes; the government should provide services for us like health care.  Yes, we do pay too much in taxes, but the government does not owe us anything, especially government sponsored health care.  I do not want a president who wants to tax us even more so that they can pay for health care for all Americans.  There would be way too much red tape and bureaucracy.  Where would you turn if something happened?  Think you will sue the government?  No, they are providing you with that “free” service.

Everyone should watch this particular video, especially those who  feel like the government owes them something.

http://www.freemarketcure.com/brainsurgery.php